


Flipping an Old Spade

by botgal



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Erivris - Freeform, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Horrorterrors - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Character Death, also some mentions of angels, former blackrom mention, redrom erivris, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 17:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8543158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/botgal/pseuds/botgal
Summary: You are not a soft person. Gentle, kind, soft: those are the sorts of words that could ever be used in the context of you. Since the day you clawed your way out of the trials in the caverns, chosen by your monstrous spider-mom to be the one she teaches and the one who feeds her insatiable appetite, you have learned that soft adjectives won't cut it. Broken glass, jagged edges, and sharp teeth are what you had to be to survive, and you had come to accept that.Or, so you thought, at least.





	

You are not a soft person. Gentle, kind, soft: those are the sorts of words that could ever be used in the context of you. Since the day you clawed your way out of the trials in the caverns, chosen by your monstrous spider-mom to be the one she teaches and the one who feeds her insatiable appetite, you have learned that soft adjectives won't cut it. Broken glass, jagged edges, and sharp teeth are what you had to be to survive, and you had come to accept that.

Or, so you thought, at least.

You threw your venom and spit-fire every which way you could see. Not caring who it landed upon, who it hurt; so long as it would show your power, your danger. It brought you greatness and strength and the fear of all those who might oppose you. And it left you alone.

You hurt your friends. Put them in danger so you could try to show off. You sabotaged everyone who might have cared for you and let them know you are a dangerous entity. One that could not and should never be trusted. A back turned your way would be the recipient of a knife. One wrong look would cost an eye. A friendly smile is just a sweeter snarl of warning.

It was only fitting, by the end, that you were hated by so many. Why you were only the danger and the evil that could never be forgiven, even by those who missed you. They might want to forgive, but know that they shouldn't. You were outcast. Alone. Untouchable. A pariah for your deeds and your words. And you couldn't blame them. You know you've done wrong, and that decent people shouldn't want to look your way with kindness.

… Maybe that's why you and he found such kindred spirits in one another.

Once upon a time, in a place far away, and all those bullshit cliches ever after, you two had been dunked in pitch for one another. Plunged your grasped hands together into the blackest of oils together, then immediately went for one another's throats with them.

For a while, it was just like a dream come true. You knew who his ancestor was, the almighty kismesis foe of your own. You admired her so deeply, and to find him was such serendipity you could hardly believe it. You two were just like your ancestors of old. Mindfang and Dualscar, age old foes reincarnate, turning the seas into a rainbow of gore and blood in your wake from all those who found themselves in the crosshairs of your games.

Or, so you had once hoped it to be.

However, in time, you found things perhaps not quite as pitch as you had once seen them to be.

Your fights were vicious and stained with blood of both your colors, of course. Your duels upon the sea something that would make even the most vicious of tempests look like tamed mewbeasts in comparison.

Yet, more often than not, you found yourselves in cooperation, not competition. You would find yourselves joined hand in hand as you scoured the seas for victims. Bows of your ships parallel to one another as they jettisoned straight for some poor, unsuspecting suckers who would become your next victims. The sharp sound and ozone musk of Ahab's Crosshairs became music that would bring relief rather than a warning to raise the hair along your neck as you knew it would most invariably be aimed toward most any ship but your own. A bloody handshake always sealed the ends of your adventures, as he would tow away the rainbow-bleeding masses of white for his moirail, and you hauled the gray flesh of trolls back home for your own lusus. He would send messages not of hatred, but of excitement, as you collaboratively worked together in order to draw up plans for the next doomsday device that he would use to eradicate all land-dwellers from the world (save yourself and a few select others he was specific to exclude from his obviously half-assed efforts) which would invariably be either sabotaged or kept from working by yourself.

Though your shouts left ears ringing and your claws and teeth drew blood from one another, you just couldn't feel it anymore. He was irritated by you, you aggravated by him, but there was no hatred. You were better partners than rivals, not enough to darken a true spade.

So, you ended it. Trailed off with not another word, leaving him dangling in an empty quadrant which had once hosted suck pitch emotions, yet now stood undeniably clean of stain. No matter how he tried to mark a new stain, even if it had to be lightened to ashen, you just couldn't see yourself hating him like you had once hoped.

Looking back at all of your past endeavors, you really wondered what you were doing with yourself. Past you was such a complete fool, as Karkat might have once said. There was no way that meek, stick in the mud little weakling Tavros could ever be anything for you like what his ancestor, the Summoner, once was for Mindfang. And why should you have expected everything between you and Eridan to be that same, broiling darkness that held together Mindfang and Dualscar? You were a wiggler living out a high fantasy life of being like your idol. It was so idiotic it was disgusting in hindsight.

And really, it was all your own fault, what happened to you. You were so fixated on that ideal, wanting to be the great, invincible figure that your ancestor had once been, with all the skill and all the luck, that you never even considered the idea you might fail. Right up to the moment when you felt the blade through your back, and the ringing of the bell as the word 'Just' echoed in your ear from some inexplicable source.

And then, you were dead. Just like that. A whole life of accomplishments and schemes and irons heating in the flames (oh so many irons, all of the irons), gone to waste with one stab. And now here you were, wandering the dream bubbles again.

That was how you had found him again.

You were both doing much of the same after your deaths, wandering the edges of the dream bubbles, perhaps a bit too close to the edges where the horrorterrors lurked for comfort, but you were willing to put up with it (he just didn't seem to mind them quite so much, he never did say why, just some odd murmurs about angels being worse before he forced a subject change). You had been striding along the edges, close enough you could barely hear their vague whispers, when you spotted him. He was lacking his garish violet cape, but you knew that build and that streak of shocking violet in his hair anywhere. He was even wearing that blue scarf he always had (knitted in your colors which you had given him in the early days of your pitch relationship, and by 'given' you of course meant tied his wrists with to keep him tied to a tree as you gloatingly took off with all his treasures from that day, he'd kept it and worn it in mocking of your actions to show he'd escaped and seemed to have just made a habit out of wearing it).

You hadn't meant to start traveling together, it had just happened. Walking side by side, making odd mentions of where you'd like to try to go, what you'd try to see. And oh it so happened he was going your way or you were going his way. You were both very aware of all this, and yet you didn't care. After being alone in the bubbles so long, some familiar company from your own timeline was actually appreciated. It wasn't so bad, really.

You knew he'd done some fucked up shit before he'd died, he seemed convinced that everyone hated him now. Well, not that you were much of a stranger to being hated. He'd blinded Sollux and murdered both the hope of your race and his former moirail in a fit of hopelessness-induced rage? Please. You'd doomed your whole session and likely the universe you all had created by intentionally allowing the existence of Bec Noir just so you could show off. You were both in the wrong. Big whoop. At least you knew you were wrong together.

You talked about such things sometimes while you traversed the bubbles. Popping from one place to another as the bubbles collided with one another, sharing their worlds for just small moments at a time when you could pass through. You both would talk. You would sleep sometimes when you felt like.

Though you had banned singing absolutely after the first couple of times. The last time he had sung, it had made you feel like you were sinking in tar; all that came out of his mouth were slow, undulating tunes and crooning melodies that sent your spine shivering and ice in your veins. Even he had seemed surprised. Said he'd heard those songs wandering near the horrorterrors in the bubbles, while killing angels in his world, but had never learnt to repeat them with such accuracy. Made you wonder if perhaps his typical theatrics about the angels weren't quite so exaggerated as usual.

You grew closer together, closer than you ever thought you could grow with a person. You got scared, because you were softening. Being soft meant losing power in the old world, it meant death. But, you _were_ dead. There was nothing left for you to lose. You were growing soft around one another, and there was really no stopping it, and nothing holding you back. So why the hell not?

You let your hands linger against his, didn't push him away when his shoulder butted against yours, or when you could feel his breath tickling your neck as he drifted off to sleep when you both leaned against one another. You let yourself linger when you woke up before him, counting the little flecks of dark across his face like freckles, or noting how his eyelashes and fins quivered in unison as he awoke. You didn't pull away sharply when you found yourself awake after him, and you glimpsed him watching you with tenderness in his eyes that you had never seen when they were still gray instead of all white, or feeling his thumb stroking along your cheek or your hair. You were both so starved for some proper, gentle touch, never having had any sort of bond in which you could have enough trust to share such things with another troll. It was a special kind of calm euphoria, growing close enough to be in one another's arms and relax, and as time went on it seemed as though neither of you could get enough.

Then came the little gifts. He found some memory of something shiny in one of the bubbles, some old earring that would clip to the lobe instead of needing a hole, and you started wearing it. You got your hands on a new cape, just like his old one, only now in your shade of cerulean, with his sign standing out in violet. He took to wearing it, and slowly your person began to glitter with small stones in his color with all the little shimmery tidbits he found, just as his attire grew more and more your color.

It was when he had found you that pair of shiny new boots, red as the blood of that mutant who had once led your team, that you kissed him for the first time.

You both had kissed before, in your old lives. But those had been roughness and viciousness and bloody escalations. You shredded one another's lips without remorse and sought control.

Now, you were careful with your fangs, and he with his rows of shark-like teeth. When one's lip was cut, the other would suckle and lick and soothe away the pain they had caused. You'd both had enough pain in life, why seek more after death? Tongues slid against one another, seeking to draw out chirrs and purrs and moans, instead of curses and blood. You both must have sounded so awful as you were getting started. Both of your sounds were so weak and pathetic, after lifetimes of underuse because you had just never felt safe or cared for or loved enough that your bodies felt they could do this. They had never properly learned the sensations that could trigger them to vocalize from your throats and chests. After a while, though, it became as easy as breathing. The touch of his lips to yours were enough to set you to purring loud enough to vibrate his chest, and he chirred unabashedly with satisfaction as you soothed away a nick your own teeth had caused him.

Sometimes your touches would get so disgustingly dripping with pale you could have laughed, but you didn't refuse it either. Only his hand did you feel safe enough to let slip under your shirt so he could thumb circles around the place where the blade had entered you to end your life. And soon enough he stopped shuddering when you ran your hands horizontal over his bare abdomen where he had been cut in half. The nonexistant scars ached, but they were soothed under one anothers' touch.

But then there were the touches that were so unabashedly, undeniably red. And you loved them, craved them. And would admit it. You grew to know one another's bodies in way you likely might never have known on your own even back when you were alive. How could you have known that a pair of lips at your collarbone would make your legs turn to jelly? How would he have ever known that just nuzzling at the gills on his neck or his sides could cause his whole body to tremble with weakness? How could either of you have known just how good it felt to be so open and trusting in another person's arms, to the point where you quite literally let them inside, when you had never before had someone you trusted so much to be so vulnerable with?

Nothing you had ever read in Mindfang's journals could really compare to the dream bubble nights when he was over your body, feeling him squirming within you while you clutched his body closer to yours and you vocalized your pleasure to his ear. Or how the sweet keens he made were music to your ears as you were the one to take that role, and he clutched at the ground as you purred and leaned over the thin yet toned curve of his back, stroking his chest and letting your sounds rumble against him.

And, in the end, as you both lay out on his cape, panting and holding one another close, letting your vulnerabilities loose and your breathing ease, you can feel him running his hands along your back, while you lay chest-to-chest with him and clutch him close to yourself as you both want to never let go. And you contemplate the utter lack of black between you now and almost laugh as you see how much happier you both are now that the spade's single leg has been cleft away, the black be drained, and the shape be turned upside-down and be filled with the brightest, warmest shade of red.

You smile, but you are not soft. You never were soft. And neither is he.

And yet, somehow, all your jagged edges and broken pieces fit together with his, and his with yours.

And together, you are still not soft.

But you are whole.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah. This is kind of just a bit of self-indulgence for me. I like me some good old blackrom between these two just as much as the next person. But sometimes I get the craving to see them in a little redrom. Without all the roughness that usually comes with these two characters.


End file.
